Best of a Bad Lot
by Mary le Bow
Summary: Was Lestrade ever a child? He must have been, at some point.
1. Chapter 1

This is quite a departure from the first story I wrote. It has violence, vice, objectionable language, and it's pretty dark. Fair warning.

BTW, thanks to everyone who reviewed. It was like M&M's by email!

** Best of a Bad Lot**

If I had not been an only child, my life would have been much different.

If the brothers and sisters who followed me into the world hadn't been dead or dying, I would have been put out to work almost as soon as I could walk, like any child of poor parents. I was small and quick and stronger than I looked; I might have made a passable chimney sweep's boy.

If other kids had come before me, my mum might have listened to reason and given me a solid, sensible English name.

If I had been one of half a dozen mouths to feed, I might have gone hungry all the time instead of only sometimes, in which case—and that's all the "if" I can stomach for now—I might have been a better thief.

As it was, I was only a fair to middling thief at the age of eight. And so it was that I had an apple halfway between a costermonger's barrow and my open mouth, half a second from bite and run, when a giant's hand clamped on my shoulder.

Gingerly I put the apple back and looked at the hand. It was calloused and clean. I looked down. Shiny black boots, dark blue woolen trouser leg.

A dreadful possibility occurred to me. I looked up, hoping against hope that I was wrong. Dark blue woollen jacket with cut-steel buttons. I was right. A constable's face, handsome and ruddy-cheeked, glowered down at me from a great height.

"Weel noo, lad," he said, "where'd ye be gooin' wi' that?"

Bleeding Christ, what was wrong with my ears?

Whatever it was began to clear; the next words were almost intelligible. "I ast ye a question. Can ye no speak English?"

"I can," I whispered. My words sounded all right, but to be safe, I tested. "Can you?"

The constable's high color climbed his temples and forehead. "Ah'm Scottish, ye cheeky brat! Where d'ye live?"

"Live? Me?" If—that word again—he marched me home now, my dad would be there, sleeping. Later, he'd be gone to the dockyard, but my mum would be home from the workshop. From him, I'd get the belt. From her—she'd cry, which was worse. "Nowhere!"

"Nowhere to live, eh? Well, it's the workhouse for you, then." He pulled on my shoulder as if to drag me off to the nightmare place. He wasn't the first to frighten a child with threats of the workhouse. Poor people were brought up to fear the name of it.

"Wait!" I fairly screamed.

"Remembered where you live?" The constable seemed to be holding back a smile.

"Yes, but I can't go there."

"Why's that? What's there that's worse than turning to thievery at your age?" He was taking the matter seriously at last, but asking questions for which I had no quick answer.

I wasn't one of those children casually knocked about by a drunken or overburdened parent. Those children got a cuff here and a swat there, all of it arbitrary. Whether they resented or were resigned to such treatment, they had the small comfort of knowing it was nothing to do with them.

I didn't live that way. My mum and dad were decent, working people. I was better off than many, as Mum kept reminding me. I thought better off was hardly the same as well off.

The constable was waiting for an answer.

I sighed. "I live on Ellen Street."

"That's better." During none of this time had his mitt of a hand left my shoulder. Had it, I would have dashed down the nearest bolthole-as he surely knew.

I didn't often meet someone sharper than myself. So far, I disliked the experience.

"It's shorter that way." I pointed east down the Commercial Road, toward Berner Street which met with Ellen.

"My beat leads this way." So we turned left into Backchurch Lane. "I pass by here twenty times a day, protecting the taxpayers from skinny midget hooligans."

Deeply insulted, I sniffed and wiped my nose on my sleeve. "When they take a man to the gallows , they at least give him a smoke and a blindfold."

"You want a blindfold?"

"A smoke."

"None such. How'd you get so dirty?"

"Mudlarking." I didn't think I looked so bad, considering I'd spent the day on the Thames mud flats.

"Find anything?"

I shrugged. "No." The river often cast up valuable flotsam—chunks of coal for the fire, bits of rope or sail that the rag and bone men might buy. "Frankie Sprague found a tooth once."

The constable stared at me. "A human tooth?"

"It had a gold filling."

"What'd you do with it?"

"Frankie hocked it, of course. I wanted to look for the stiff it came off of, but he said I was cracked."

"You might have told the police."

"What was you like to do about it, whoever it was being dead?"

"You don't know he was dead. Should have been a police report. Which house do you live in?"

We stood at the corner of Ellen Street. "Number 18." The street was a solid block of identical houses. Sometimes people got drunk and mistook them. That gave us some awkward moments.

The door was warped, hanging askew on its hinges. The constable yanked it open, then paused in the gloom, straining to see.

Rickety stairs led up into darkness.

No sense in taking advantage of the dark to run. He knew where I lived.

I paused at the door to our room. Dad would be just waking up.

And I was in for it.

The constable looked at me. In the dim light, he seemed to loom even taller. "Last chance. Why are you afraid to go in there?"

"I ain't afraid of nothing!" I said with defiance born of fear.

"Have it your way. What's your dad's name?"

Best get it over with. "Will. I mean William Lestrade."

He rapped on the door. Dad opened it, his shirt still unbuttoned and his hair not combed yet. "Yeah?"

"Mr. Lestrade? I'm Constable Byrne," my captor said. "Your lad here—"

What he added to that, I didn't hear. I was struck suddenly by how very tired my dad looked.

I had never given much consideration to his life. Now I thought guiltily of him working all night as a watchman at the London Docks, alone in the dark, then doing a stevedore's work the next morning, catching a nap, only to find this at his door.

The look he gave me was worse than the fury I had feared. It was despair. "Ain't I told you a hundred times? And your mum, too? What are we to do with you?"

"If you'll pardon an observation," Constable Byrne put in, "he's scared he'll get a thrashin'."

"He's got that to rights."

My new sympathy for anyone but myself went like water down a gutter. "Thanks much," I muttered to the constable.

"Don't go too hard on him," Byrne added, as if he hadn't fixed me well enough already. "I'll be back tomorrow to take him to Sunday school."

With that, he left.

Dad's exhausted look turned into the glittering energy of rage. "What do you mean, bringing the coppers down on us?" He grabbed my wrist, yanked me into the room, and slammed the door. This time, he did me the courtesy of telling me what I had done. The gist was that I should be decent, respectable, and not a common thief. Every other word or so was underlined with a whack from his belt.

Mum came home, carrying the bread that was our usual warm-weather supper. I stood at the window, stubbornly refusing to cry, while Dad buckled the belt.

Mum sank into her chair. "What now?"

"For the love of heaven, Nancy, don't ask." Dad cut a slice of bread and went out the door eating it.

Mum sighed, then began to cut the bread and put the kettle on for tea.

I was too big to cry, but little enough to want soothing. "They say I have to go to Sunday school."

"School!" The word to her seemed to have an utterly opposite meaning from what it did to me. There was a gleam of hope and calculation in her eyes that didn't bode well for me. "School..."

I interrupted whatever daydream she was lost in. "Dad beat me."

"Come here." She held out her arms to me, and I leaned against her. She didn't quite hold me, careful not to hurt me more by touching the smarting welts. "I wish he weren't so heavy-handed with you."

"You ain't the only one." It was as if storing up his anger made it stronger.

Having once again taken my side and feeling disloyal for it, she let me go. "That ain't to say you don't earn it. What'd you do this time?"

I sullenly ate instead of answering.

"If you'd only cry a bit, he'd feel guilty and stop. You make it worse by being so prideful."

I had nothing to lose by asking, "If he took the belt to you, is that what you'd do? Cry a bit?"

Her blue eyes went dark with anger. I'd gotten that touchy pride from her.

"You got no call to find fault with me," she said. "You'll go to school tomorrow and to work with me the Monday. You can't get in no trouble there, I should hope."

She made straw hats—all day. I went along when there was fetching and carrying or sweeping up for me to do. It bored me to desperation.

Then she said about the only thing that could have made my situation more unbearable. "You can't go to school filthy from head to foot. You'll have to scrub."

As Constable Byrne led me to the dreaded school, I said, "I'd like to know what I ever done to _you_." Mum had made me scrub everything, even my toenails, although I had pointed out that nobody would see them. Cleanliness had done nothing to lighten my resentful mood.

"You want to know why I bother with a smart-mouthed guttersnipe, instead of restin' of a Sunday? Look at that lot there." He pointed to the curb, where hard-eyed boys crouched, passing the stub of a cigar around. They took no notice of the drunkard sprawled on the walk, nor of the blowzy unfortunate leaning against the wall. She must have been hard-up or addled, to be out working so early.

"So?" Drunkards, whores, and street kids were nothing special. I saw them every day.

"So you're better than that!" He grabbed me by the shoulders and gave me a rough shake. "You're smarter than that. And it's over my dead body you'll end in the gutter like them, so step lively!" He gave me a push.

Do-gooders came to the East End like flies to a midden. They never stayed long. I only had to humor him until he gave up, too.

Then again, do-gooders were usually old ladies in fancy dresses. No other, so far as I knew, was a six-foot Scottish policeman with a billy to crack your head if you wouldn't reform.

When I saw where we were going, I had another complaint. "That ain't no school. It's a church."

The constable sighed. He seemed out of patience, although that couldn't have had anything to do with me. "It's a Methodist chapel in the morning, and a Sunday school in the afternoon."

"Methodists." I though that over. Methodist street preachers were do-gooders, but at least they were entertaining. The words _hell,_ _damn_, and _Jesus Christ_ came up fairly often in their sermons.

"You got anything against Methodists?"

"No." I shook my head, all innocence. "I like to hear 'em preach."

"Good." For some reason, he didn't look like he believed me.

His enthusiasm for my schooling was explained at sight of the teacher. She was a little bird of a thing, in a stern black dress that made her look very young. She had curly brown hair, skin the color of coffee with cream, and large, soft brown eyes. I had seen people like her before, although not many. They came off the ships that brought sugar, tobacco and rum from unimaginably far places called Jamaica, Barbados, New Orleans.

When she wasn't looking, Constable Byrne gazed at her as if she were an angel in a church picture.

To me, this meant primarily that I'd better watch my step. He was sweet on her, and wouldn't take kindly to any lying, stealing, smoking or blasphemy from the pupil he'd brought her.

Twenty kids sat on benches, some quietly, others fidgeting. Most, to my seven-year-old disgust, were little girls.

Constable Byrne wisely sat me in the first row, where the teacher could keep a sharp eye on me. He threw me an or-else look and went away.

The teacher wrote on a slate and gave it to a benchful of the little girls, then got the others reading or reciting together. She picked a small book from her table and sat next to me. She smiled and held out her hand. "My name is Miss Anne Jackson."

"'Ello, Miss." I shook her hand. It was soft and warm and smelled of soap. Close to, Constable Byrne's reasons for admiration became clear. She was very pretty.

Then Miss Jackson's calm, sweet face changed. Her lips pressed together, and a vertical line formed between her eyebrows. She had not let go of my hand. "Are you hurt?"

"No." I pulled my hand away, yanking my sleeve down over the bruises on my wrist. I didn't need anyone's pity.

"If you are quite sure. " She spoke clearly and crisply. I was too ignorant even to understand that she was trying to teach me better manners and grammar. "What is your name?"

"Lestrade."

"Do you have a Christian name?"

This was a puzzle. "A what?"

"What do your mother and father call you?"

"Their son, of course." Apparently you didn't have to be smart to be a teacher.

"All right. Never mind." She opened the book. "This is a book of the alphabet. It shows the letters that make up every word in the language. It tells the sounds they stand for. Once you learn those letters, you can read any word."

She turned to the first page. "This is letter A. A is for apple."

And there was a picture of the very thing that had started all my trouble. Well, I wasn't likely to forget that letter.

I understood "ball," as well, though nobody I knew had toys.

"Cat" was easy. Cats killed rats, and yowled and fought in the night.

"Dog" was easy,too. Dogs roamed the streets, eating garbage.

"You see?" Miss Jackson asked. "Each letter makes the sound that starts the word."

Then we got to "elephant" and "fan."

"I ain't never seen none of them things," I objected.

"I _have_ never seen _any_ of _those_ things," Miss Jackson said.

"Well, if you ain't never seen 'em, neither, how do you 'spect to learn me about 'em?"

A different sort of teacher would have given me a smack for that. Fortunately for us both, Miss Jackson wasn't that sort. She nodded at shelves in the corner. "You'll find a set of books there. They are called the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Please fetch the one with the letter E on it." She pointed again to E in the small book.

I shrugged, and fetched a volume of the 1823 edition of the Encyclopedia.

Miss Jackson turned the pages. "There," she said. "This is the article about elephants."

This book had drawings, too, better than the other.

"Do you want to know about elephants?" Miss Jackson asked.

There was very little I didn't want to know. I nodded. "Will you read it to me?"

She smiled. "No."

"That ain't hardly fair," I said, although just how it wasn't fair, I couldn't have said.

"I'll help you learn to read for yourself," Miss Jackson said quietly. "Is that fair?"

By the time the church bells rang six o'clock, I had learned enough of the letters to scratch a few of them in chalk on a slate.


	2. Chapter 2

On the way to work, Mum turned the pages of the alphabet book. "So when you know all them letters, you can read?"

I shrugged. "So the teacher says."

"That won't take you no time. You never forget nothing." She pointed to the picture of the zebra. "What's that, then, a striped donkey?"

"A zebra, what lives in Africa, where the elephants are."

"You learnt all that already? When you know how to read, could you show me?"

"Didn't know you wanted to learn to read, Mum."

"Seem to me if I could, I might find better work. Make a bit better life for us."

I hadn't imagined my mum having any ambition other than to stay alive another day. I took her so for granted that I hadn't thought of what went on in her head. I couldn't say I liked that. What else was she keeping to herself?

At the end of the day, the women got a shilling each, and the straw man, as we called the shop's owner, tossed me sixpence. "There y'are, lad," he said with a wink, as if it were a gift instead of payment for ten hours' work. "Now, ladies, I got to tell you that was your last day til spring. Nobody don't want no straw hats come winter."

There were a few dismayed whispers, a few whimpers of true fear. Being out of work might mean you'd starve.

"Here, Nancy—" The straw man drew Mum aside and lowered his voice. "I'm truly sorry to put you out, with a child to look after and all. Mayhap if you come round by yourself of an evening, I might find something for you to do."

Storm clouds seemed to gather in my mother's sky-colored eyes. "I told you before, I ain't interested, you filthy creature! Get away from me, and be damned to you!" She gave him a smack that sent him reeling.

She grabbed my wrist in one hand and Eliza Sprague's in the other, and swept away in high dudgeon. I didn't dare ruin her exit by complaining about her grip on my bruised wrist.

Rubbing his reddened cheek, the straw man yelled after her, "You needn't get so high and mighty, _Mrs_. Lestrade! You ain't nothin' but Nancy Lewis off the streets of Bethnal Green!"

Mum shoved Eliza and me out the door and slammed it.

Eliza was fourteen, and liked a good show. "Cheeky bugger," she muttered. "And in front of the boy, too."

Mum was still seething. "Get off it."

Then they put the trouble aside and talked over whether it would be better to stay in town and look for work, or go to the country to pick hops. To my slight, Mum decided that she would take Eliza to Kent, where the air was fresh and the food plentiful, while I would stay home so as not to miss school.

"But, Mum!" I pulled at her sleeve. "That would mean—" It meant I would be left with Dad for a month or more, with nobody to step between us.

"Mean what?" Mum asked sharply.

"Nothing." She had to go. We needed the money.

That evening, though, I watched out the window for Constable Byrne, then ran out to catch up with him.

"Coppers keep folks from beating on each other, don't you?" I asked, trying to sound as if the answer didn't mean anything in particular to me.

"It isn't polite to call us coppers." He didn't break his stride. I trotted to keep up.

"Blue bottles?" I guessed.

He shook his head.

"Bobbies?"

"How about _policemen_?" he suggested rather forcefully.

"Ah." For the sake of winning favor with Miss Jackson, I was making an attempt at polite words. "Policemen, then. Well, do you?"

"When we can."

That was vague.

"Miss Jackson said you got hurt." He gave me a sharp look. "Is that so?"

I couldn't very well say no. That would be almost the same as calling Miss Jackson a liar. Instead, I changed the subject. "I want to be a policeman, too."

"That's fine." Byrne smiled. "That's very fine." He started to say something more, but changed his mind.

The month didn't go as badly as I'd feared. It was the time of year to clean chimneys, and I picked up a few days' work as a sweep's boy. Mum would have been furious, and gone on about the cough all those boys had, and how dangerous climbing about on the roof was, and so on. To my way of thinking, climbing about on the roof was not a bad thing. Besides, it kept me out of the house and out of Dad's way.

For the first three nights, he told me the same thing as he left for work. "Lock the door and don't open it for nobody."

On the fourth night, he said, "Being alone at night don't bother you?"

"No." A locked door would keep me safe enough from any real danger, and I didn't have the imagination to scare myself with things that went bump in the night.

He nodded. "Right, then."

I watched from the window until he turned the corner at Christian Street toward the docks. Then I raised the casement, and smoked the cig I had bought with a farthing from my day's wages.


	3. Chapter 3

I went to Sunday school and acted civilized, more to see Miss Jackson and get away from Dad than to learn anything. By staying late and all but interrogating the poor woman, I learned that she was born in London, that her father was a merchant marine from Boston, Massachusetts, and that I could stay out of the house very nearly all day Sunday, if I was willing to go to church services in the morning.

I agreed out of sheer self-interest. Even then, I had difficulty believing in anything I couldn't see evidence of, and God definitely fell into that category. Miss Jackson said I could sit with her family and her, if mine wouldn't come with me. I had no intention of inviting them.

On the third of those Sundays, Miss Jackson shooed us all out and locked the door. She looked half-amused and half-exasperated to find Constable Byrne on the doorstep, as usual.

"How's he been behaving?" he asked, giving me a softer look than was usual.

"Very well." Miss Jackson winked at me. "We might make an educated Christian man out of him before the Second Coming."

"That would be a nice surprise for Jesus," Byrne observed dryly.

"You really needn't walk me home, Constable," she said. "It's quite safe."

Although I would have liked to keep my teacher to myself a bit longer, I was too young for real jealousy. "He likes to," I piped up. "He wants to walk out with you, and don't know how to ask you."

They stared at me, then at each other, Miss Jackson trying not to laugh, the constable blushing fiery red.

"You do make astute observations," Miss Jackson said to me.

"What are those?"

"Things that save a great deal of time and trouble." She smiled at the constable. "Now, I nearly forgot." She handed me a copybook. "You'll need that if you intend to keep up your schooling."

"You might as well have this, then, too." Constable Byrne pulled a yellowback novel from his pocket.

"May I?" Miss Jackson held out her hand for the book. Byrne gave it over, with the air of having been caught in the act.

Miss Jackson read the title, raising an eyebrow. "'Murders in the Rue Morgue.' How elevating."

"Do you want him to learn to read or not?"

"Murders? Morgue?" I had to have that book.

Miss Jackson sighed. "You may read this on one condition."

"Anything you say, Miss."

"When you find a word in it that you don't understand, ask the constable what it means."

Over the several months it took to decipher that rather short story, I developed an odd habit of listening for the sound of the constable's boots as he walked his beat. When I heard it, I threw open the window and yelled down questions such as, "What's an orangutan?"

XXXX

By the time Mum came home from hop-picking, I could show her how I wrote my name.

"It says G. Lestrade," I said, proud of the uneven lettering.

She sighed. "'G'? You ain't never forgive me for naming you Galahad, have you?"

"No. First you give me that name, then you scold me for getting into fights. It ain't—isn't fair."

"I don't scold you for that. I scold you for losing your temper."

I could have pointed out that I was hardly the only one in this family guilty of that, but didn't risk it. Instead, I wrote out her name. "That's yours. Nancy Lestrade."

She took the copybook and admired it for a minute. "Write your dad's, too."

What a rare opportunity to show off this was turning out to be—except that I had no idea how to spell William. Not to be deterred by this minor point, I used the name everybody called him by anyway.

"There. Will Lestrade." I showed it to Mum.

"That's fine, son. That's fine." The example was her favorite—probably because I was neither ignoring Dad nor provoking him to violence. She ruffled my hair and kissed the crown of my head.

"Mum!" I was eight years old, for God's sake. That sort of thing was beneath my dignity.

"Beg pardon, guv." She stuck her tongue out. "Now go on, show me what else the teacher learnt you."

"Miss Jackson says I'm bright and ought to go to school every day," I said, with no attempt at modesty.

"Do you want to?"

It had only been something to brag on. I never thought she'd take the idea seriously. "Can't. It costs money."

"Hm." She put her fist under her chin, thinking. "She teaches that school, the every day school? She'll take you in?"

I nodded. "But like I said, Mum, the money."

"I heard. Now, what do you think I done today? Paid our rent up to the end of the month."

"You made that much?" The year must have been a grand one for hops.

"Oh, I gathered bushels of the stuff. And look here." She reached into her apron pocket and came up with two Seckel pears and her neckerchief, its corners neatly tied to make a little square bundle.

As she untied the knots, the sleepy scent of hops mingled with a garlicky richness.

"Is that sausage?" My mouth watered at the thought.

"There." She folded the cloth back with a little flourish, revealing thick slices of summer sausage and a half-pound wedge of cheese.

As we ate, she asked, "You and your dad get along all right without me?"

I shrugged. "S'pose so. Excepting he don't like me much."

"Don't you say that! He does his best for us every day. Lord knows where we'd be without him."

That wasn't the same as liking, though I knew better than to press the issue. "You do your best, too, Mum."

"That I do," she said with a sad little smile, "for all the good it does us. Here, now." She reached into her pocket again, this time coming up with half a dozen pennies. She pushed the coins across the table to me. "That's to go to school on."

That meant a whole week with Miss Jackson. "Mum, are you sure you won't need it?" I had learned to count on nothing in this world.

"I told you, the rent's paid up. Besides, I'll find work tomorrow."

XXX

A/N: I am not a Christian, so if any description of Christian/Methodist beliefs and practices seems wildly inaccurate, feel free to enlighten me.


	4. Chapter 4

But she didn't find work, not that day, the next, nor any day that week. By Saturday night, I should have been resigned to there being no more weekday school for me. Instead, I hoped for some impossible last-minute reprieve.

As if she had come to a decision, Mum said, "Look here, I have to see a sick friend."

"At this hour? Who is it?"

"Never you mind." She smoothed her red-gold hair at the mirror and put her hat on. "And don't wait up. Finish your learning and go to bed."

A sick friend and _never you mind_ could mean only one thing. "Who's crying drunk this time, Mr. Sprague or Mrs.?"

Mum paused with her hand on the doorknob. With an exasperated sigh, she turned back and said, "Now, we all know you got the eyes of a hawk and the memory of one of them nelephant beasts, but just because you figure a thing out don't mean you have to say you done it. Folks do like a bit of privacy, after all."

She didn't quite slam the door.

I stood at the window to see her out. The Spragues lived two houses down on the right, but Mum turned left, toward Berner Street and the Commercial Road.

I went back to my schoolwork, but couldn't pay attention to the words on the page. Lately, when I was lonely or uncertain, I imagined my future self. Constable Lestrade—who, not surprisingly, looked very much like Constable Byrne—would probably spend a Saturday night breaking up tavern fights and hauling drunks off to gaol. That was more in my line than reading morally improving quotations from the Book of Proverbs.

When I had exhausted the possibilities of my singular daydream, I tapped my fingers on the table. It seemed to me a policeman ought to be able to spell his own dad's name. It had been worrying me that I still didn't know how.

Mum kept my certificate of baptism in a rusty tea tin. His name would be on the certificate, wouldn't it?

I got the tin from its shelf and pried the lid off. It didn't rattle. That was a sign of how bad off we were at the moment; if Mum had a spare farthing, she set it by in the tin.

Two papers were inside, one folded right sides out, the other right sides in. That must be how Mum told them apart.

The one folded right sides out was my certificate. But it didn't give my father's name, only mine. Mum hadn't gotten around to having me baptized until the ninth of February, 1849, when I was nearly two years old. That was no surprise. She wasn't much of a churchgoer.

The second paper was a marriage certificate for Mum and Dad, also dated—I laughed out loud—the ninth of February, 1849. It seemed Mum wasn't the only one to be faulted for tardiness.

Next time Dad went on about what decent and proper folks we were, I'd have a good excuse for not taking it to heart.

Grinning to myself, I put everything back exactly where it had been, blew out the candle, and went to bed. At least I knew how to spell Dad's name now.

When I woke, it wasn't even dawn. I lay in blackness until I realized what had woken me. Mum had come home and stumbled over my pallet in the dark. I wondered what time it was and wished the church bells would ring to tell me.

Mum felt her way to the shelf. There was a scrape as she opened the tin and a rattle as she dropped a coin in.

I was not innocent. I knew there were precious few ways to earn honest money in the middle of the night.

And I hoped to God that I was wrong for once.

xXx

In the morning, a shilling glittered next to my bread and butter.

Mum didn't look at me.

For the first time in my life, I couldn't eat.


	5. Chapter 5

Every friend she had must have fallen sick in the next few weeks.

What could I have done?

I could have asked for Constable Byrne's help, but that would have done no good. I had begun to understand that even my hero couldn't fix everything. Instead, I went on watching for him out the window and running down to walk with him around the block, hoping he would somehow corner me into telling him what was on my mind.

Several times, Miss Jackson gently asked what troubled me. I already felt like an imposter, sitting in her church, pretending to listen to sermons I didn't believe a word of, sitting in her classroom, knowing what my mother did to keep me there. I looked at my teacher's soft hands and clean dress, listened to her cultured voice, and couldn't bring myself to say a word.

I could have done the simplest and most difficult thing of all—told Mum she was breaking my heart and nothing was worth that.

I never had to. In cold November, she found work, selling tea outside the London Hospital. It meant standing all day in the cruel wind and choking fog, but she was so relieved to get any honest work, she came home and danced around the room.

We had four months' peace, the happiest time I had yet known.

Miss Jackson set about trying to teach me arithmetic. It was easier for me than for her. She maintained that nine plus nine made eighteen. I knew it was a bob and tanner. I was equally certain that if the first train was traveling at ten miles per hour and the second at twenty, the most likely result was a needless tragedy.

I fell into a routine that was comforting because it was predictable. I went to school in the day. Late in the afternoon, I went to Mum for a cup of milky tea alongside the medical students, nursing sisters and jarvies. In the shadow of the great hospital, we watched the endless traffic on Whitechapel Road. In the last of the twilight, she gave me a handful of coins for the soup or fish and chips that made our cold-weather suppers. Home as darkness fell, I put coal on the fire to warm the room and food, said goodbye to Dad and waited for Mum.

On what I didn't know would be the last peaceful day, all of those quiet, sane things happened, with one exception. Dad put on his hat and scarf, but instead of saying goodbye, he said, without looking at me, "It's a workmanlike job you're doing."

I had sat with my back to the fire, to do my lessons. I looked up. "What?"

"Going to school. Helping your mum. You're a good lad."

I was too astonished to answer.

When Mum came in, I had the perfect opportunity to brag a bit, but those spare, awkward words of praise seemed too personal to repeat.

The soup that night was barley. Mum was spooning it into bowls when somebody knocked on the door, a single, somehow nervous rap.

"I'll go," I said, and went before Mum's hastily outstretched hand could grab me.

A man stood in the doorway, huddled into a threadbare jacket that glistened with rain. His tattered wool cap and black hair streamed water.

He pulled his cold-reddened bare hands from his pockets, wiped rain off his face and tugged his cap off, in quick, decisive movements.

Maybe it was a trick of the firelight, but his eyes were so dark that looking into them made me uncomfortable, as if I were seeing into the inside of his head. Or maybe it wasn't the color at all, but the way he looked at me. It was the way Miss Jackson looked when she talked about getting an education, the way Constable Byrne had looked when he told me I'd end in the gutter over his dead body.

Then Mum dropped my jacket over my shoulders. "Go outside."

"It's raining buckets!" I protested.

The stranger pushed his sleeves back and held his hands to the fire. As he rubbed his goose-fleshed arms in the warmth, I saw a tattoo on his right forearm: a snarling black hound leaping through a wreath of green clover.

Mum shoved me out the door and closed it. The key grated in the lock.

Since I couldn't look through the keyhole, I had to be content with putting my ear to it.

The man was saying something about thinking nobody would tell him.

"Too late to come looking for me, Jamie," Mum answered, as angry as I'd ever heard her.

"It's not you I came to see." The man's tone was calm and dead stubborn. He talked like the Irish. They kept coming to London to find work, and were despised for taking it away from the English by working cheaper. "I've a right to see him."

It was Dad he had business with, then. Strange, him showing up at a time when he must have known Dad was at work.

Mum didn't answer.

As dogged as if he had met disagreement, the man—Jamie—said, "I do, and you know it. He's mine."

She gave an unpleasant laugh. "What makes you think that?"

"Christ Jesus, I've eyes! It's plain as day. And you let me hear it from Bob, nine years late? Why didn't you tell me yourself?"

Reading the crime pages in the _Illustrated London News_ had taught me the meaning of some interesting words—blackmail, extortion, and all sorts of other things that might be what this was about.

Behind the door, Mum's voice rose in a screech of anger. "_Tell _you? Where the hell were you? Rising against the Irish Constabulary with a bloody pitchfork?"

He answered, too low for me to hear.

"Oh, to hell with your Ireland!" Mum shrieked.

There was a scrape, a thud, and a man's yelp of pain. I leaped away, stumbling against the door of the room opposite ours, where the two unfortunates lived. Unfortunates was what Mum called them, any rate. Dad had a nasty habit of calling them filthy whores, and not behind their backs, either.

They peeped out, whispering. A row from the uppity neighbors was an entertainment.

Then our door was flung open and Jamie was thrown out. Mum ran after him, with the frying pan raised like a club.

An instant before she would have brought five pounds of iron down on his head, Jamie vaulted over the stair rail and landed with the grace of a cat on the next floor down. Another leap took him to the ground floor. He hit it running. The street door banged after him.

I thought I was fast.

In the sudden silence, Mum stood panting and shaking, the frying pan still aloft.

"Mum?" I called to her.

That was a poor idea; it drew her attention to me. "Didn't I say to go outside?"

The kinder of the unfortunates, only a girl herself, spoke up. "He ain't doing no harm, missus. Put that there cook pot down."

That made her notice the pan. She lowered it, then dropped it with a hollow clang.

"You go back in there, she gonna light into you?" the girl whispered to me.

I shook my head. "Thanks, though."

"Ain't no trouble."

I left her scant protection. Mum picked up the pan, put it back on the hearth, and began scrubbing at the mud Jamie had tracked in.

It wasn't only mud, though. Bits of straw and sawdust clung to the bootprints.

Mum threw it into the fire. "Sit down."

I sat, waiting for some explanation. At the back of my mind, I wondered if the soup had gotten cold.

It hadn't. Silently, Mum set the bowl in front of me.

I looked up at her.

"Well, eat," she said.

"Who was that?"

"Never you mind."

The last time she'd said that, it hadn't turned out well at all. Since she pretended I didn't know about that, I didn't remind her.

"Now, you listen!" She wheeled on me. "You listen, and don't go asking no questions. You don't talk about that man again, and you stay away from him. He's dangerous."

"But—"

She raised a hand as if to smack me. She had never laid a hand on me. I cringed, not from a smack but from her inexplicable anger.

Tears sprang to her eyes. In gesture that was almost a slap, she covered her face with her hands and flung herself into her chair. "I'm so sorry, lad. I don't mean to scare you."

"Mum—"

"No, let me tell it, though you ain't likely to understand." Her eyes glistened and her tone was bitter as sleet. "He has a cause. Having a cause makes you dangerous."

She was right. I didn't understand—yet.


	6. Chapter 6

If only she hadn't told me not to ask questions. She might as well have pointed out a rat to a terrier and ordered him not to chase it. As contrary to his nature as that would be, lack of curiosity was to mine.

And that was an excuse. I wanted to know for my own sake, not because of some investigative strain in my blood.

I confronted Constable Byrne with an obvious line of inquiry. "Are the Irish Constabulary the police in Ireland?"

"They are."

"Have you ever heard of somebody fighting them with pitchforks?"

"No." He scratched his head. "I recall hearing of a shootout, though."

"With guns?"

"No, with slingshots! Of course with guns." He gave me a look. "Why are you asking?"

"Something I heard."

"Now, that troubles me. I thought the Young Irelanders were finished."

"Who're they?"

"Irish rebels. Heaven knows they've got a grievance, but when they shoot policemen to make a point, I lose patience with 'em. You heard of them hereabouts?"

I shook my head. "I heard it from my mum. I don't know any Irishmen." It was the truth—thus far.

xXx

There were two problems: knowing where to look, and concocting a plausible reason to go there.

I started with what Constable Byrne had done more than once while I looked on in fascination. "Taking down the particulars," he had called it, but police language aside, it meant writing down what you knew. On a half-sheet of foolscap "borrowed" from school, I wrote carefully that the man I had to find was called Jamie. He was Irish. To look at, small and wiry, with black hair and very dark eyes. Tattoo of a black hound leaping through clover. Straw and sawdust on his boots. Dressed like a workman, and not a well-paid one.

Then I drummed my fingers on the table, stared at this short, less-than-thorough list and wondered how to make a plan of action out of it.

The tattoo had to mean something. Nobody got one for no reason. It was important to him, but why?

Almost all sailors had tattoos, while almost nobody who wasn't a sailor had one. Therefore, he was probably a sailor. I wasn't sure how that related to the straw, which I assumed meant he spent considerable time around horses. Maybe he worked on a cattle boat.

That was something to go on, anyway, although not very far. The logical place to find a sailor was at the docks, where I was likely to run into Dad, or one of his workmates, who would tell him what I was up to. And there my search would end, with me black and blue and Mum trying—again—to defend each of us to the other.

With the obvious plan a bad one, I had to find an alternative. The man was Irish. Where did Irishmen go? In my experience, pubs and Catholic churches. Jamie hadn't struck me as the churchgoing type, which left pubs—another place sailors were likely to be found. That was where I should start.

Making a decision, any decision, always comforted me. Feeling relieved to the point of smugness, I waved my list in the air to dry the ink. Very fortunately, nothing had come of Mum's remark about wanting to learn to read, so she wouldn't know what I had written. I folded the paper in neat quarters and slipped it between the pages of my copybook.

"Mum," I said, "I was thinking..."

"What about?" She looked up from the cabbage she was cutting to add to the soup.

"Now that the weather's better, I might earn a bit again."

She shook her head. "You'll go to school."

"After school, I meant, and Saturdays. I was thinking I could sell cigs for Mrs. Sprague."

"Well..." She bit her lip, considering. "Heaven knows we can use the money. Them shoes you got ain't going to fit much longer."

Nobody knew that better than I. I curled my toes under to fit into them, and still they pinched cruelly. I hadn't mentioned that to Mum; it would be only another worry for her.

She thought it over. "All right, then. But you do your learning just the same. And be home by nine o'clock. Nine, mind."

xXx

Mrs. Sprague added to the rules."Mind they don't get nicked."

"Yes, ma'am."

"And stay clear of ruffians and chicken hawks. Anything happens to you, your mum'll have my head."

"Yes, ma'am." I didn't know which was more pathetic about Mrs. Sprague; that she always expected disaster, or that she always got it.

"And don't give nobody nothing till they pay for it."

I had known all this when I was four years old. With some effort, I refrained from rolling my eyes, and said, "Yes, ma'am," for what, with any luck, would be the last time.

"They do teach you nice ways at that school. Wish you'd take Frankie with you. He could do with some polite company."

Frankie and I hadn't spent much time together lately. We were too old to play in the streets now. I went to school and he spent most of the day rolling cigs alongside his parents.

He shot me a glare that would blast granite. "School? Get all polished up to go sit on a bench and take orders from a nigra? That's for sissies, that is!"

I punched him square in the nose.

Mrs. Sprague smacked me. "Somebody says something you take against, you hit him? Learn that one from Will, did you?"

As I was slamming the door, she was scolding Frankie: "Well, you asked for it. Tip your head back, you silly fool! You'll bleed all over your shirt."

People talked about getting angry and seeing red. They were right. In my anger, I had seen the veins on the backs of my eyeballs. Maybe Dad in one of his rages saw the same thing.

And maybe I had learned it from him.


	7. Chapter 7

As I'd planned, selling cigs gave me an excuse to walk into pubs and ask casually if Jamie had been in. I got blank looks and "Jamie who?" in The Ten Bells, The King's Arms, and every other drinking establishment in Whitechapel.

I described the man so many times to so many people, to no effect, that I started to wonder if I'd imagined him.

I scanned the faces at friendly society meetings, cockfights, and wakes. For all the progress I made, he didn't exist.

I kept a careful list of everyplace I'd looked.

By late July, I had collected almost enough pennies and halfpennies for a larger pair of shoes from Pettycoat Lane, if the seller would take the old ones in trade. I had given up on wearing them. Bare feet in the summer weren't much of a hardship.

In the long summer twilight, outside a place in Limehouse, called the Harp and Crown, I leaned against the wall and lit a cig. I didn't have the tobacco habit yet—or, rather, it didn't have me—but pinching a smoke once in a while made me feel grown up.

Despite its noble name, the Harp and Crown was a shibeen, friendly enough, but neither fancy nor especially clean. Its door was painted green, with a picture of a gold crown and a triangle-shaped thing that looked nothing like the harps carried by angels in the pictures at chapel.

The barman hadn't been helpful. I had described Jamie for the one hundred and fourth time—yes, there were that many pubs and gin palaces, and I had been to them all, along with any Catholic chapel I happened to pass. But the barman, instead of saying yes or no, had listened to me with his head cocked, then said, "You'll have to do better than that. Little, dark, scrappy-like—that might be me. Might be you." He sounded Irish, and so did the drinkers at the tables. If nothing else, I was in a likely neighborhood.

It was nearly nine, but I had gotten away several times with claiming that I had left when the bells struck. It was plausible that walking home might take a bit of time.

The Harp and Crown's painted door squeaked open and a man came out. His face was in shadow as he reached behind his ear, pulled out a cig, stuck it in his mouth and cupped a match to it. He braced one foot against the brick wall and wiped sawdust from his boot. As if making idle conversation, he said, "You don't bloody well quit, do you?"

He was so matter-of-fact I had to point to myself to make sure he was talking to me.

He grinned. "Who else?"

I wanted to laugh out loud. The mysterious Jamie—I'd finally found him! I'd tracked him down all on my own and here he was. What a policeman I'd make! It didn't occur to me that he had found me, not the other way round.

"Seems you and me might have a bit to talk about," Jamie said, polishing his other boot. "Can I stand you to a meal?"

Before I was born, Irish potatoes had been cheap and plentiful. Since the Famine, they were a rare treat. The Harp and Crown's were fried in bacon grease, crisp and delicious. The chewy white bread with blackcurrant preserves wasn't bad, either.

As the barman took the empty plates, I saw the tattoo on his arm. A black hound and wreath of green clover, just like Jamie's.

He also brought a crock and a tiny glass. Jamie poured half an inch of liquid from one to the other and pushed the glass across the table. "Here."

It looked nothing like beer, wine, or gin. "Is that Scotch?"

"Gah!" He made a face. "That's Irish whiskey, and it's ashamed I am you don't know it when you see it."

"You want me to drink it? You know I'm nine years old, right?" Mum and Dad never touched spirits. Dad said gin palaces were a disgrace and drunken sots ought to be ashamed of themselves.

On the other hand, if Dad disapproved, that was reason enough for me to try it. I sipped. It was like putting a match out on my tongue. To get it over with, I swallowed the rest in one gulp. By a miracle, I didn't gag.

"Good man!" Jamie stomped his feet and slapped his hands on the table, as if he had witnessed some amazing spectacle and couldn't contain his glee. "That's how it's done!"

He refilled the glass, then took a swig from the crock.

"So." I wished for water to take the taste of Irish whiskey out of my mouth. There wasn't any, so I lit another cig and hoped it would do. "Why did you want to see Dad?"

"Nancy say to call him that?" Jamie pulled a pipe and tobacco tin from his pocket.

"Maybe. I was too young to remember." Why did he want to know that?

"It was you I wanted to see."

"Me? What for?"

"Don't you know?"

I shook my head.

"Jesus, Mary and Joseph." He stared at me as if I had sprouted wings. "She didn't tell me about you, nor you about me? What's she playing at?"

"Would you mind telling me what in hell you're talking about?" People who spoke in riddles made me irritable. Either that, or the whiskey was going to my head. In any case, I wanted to hear a plain, simple explanation.

"Do you mean to say," Jamie asked, still unable to believe it, "you spent months looking high and low for me, and you don't even know who I am?"

"If I knew who you were," I explained with my last shred of patience, "it wouldn't have taken months. Now, what do you want with me?"

He laughed in disbelief. "First off, I want to tell you that you are one mighty child. You get onto something and you hang on like a bulldog." Sobered, he pointed to the glass of whiskey. I could swear his hand shook. "You might want that before you hear."

"Hear what?"

"Knock it back and I'll tell you."

We'd gotten this far. I shrugged, and drained the glass.

"Well, it's like this..." Jamie had another swig from the crock. He bit his knuckles. "It's that Nancy didn't tell you who your dad—"

"_Dad_!" I jumped up in horror. "What time is it?"

"I don't know, but the thing is, lad—"

This was Sunday, Dad's night off. He'd be there when I got home, God knew how much past nine. How could I have forgotten? "Jamie, I've got to go."

"But wait, I've got to tell you—"

"Meet me here tomorrow. I don't know when, but I'll be here." If I was alive tomorrow, that was.

"You're not going off by yourself in the middle of the night. I'll come with you."

"_No_!" Showing up with him would make the beating waiting for me at home a thousand times worse.

Too late, I ran like the devil was at my heels.


	8. Chapter 8

_A/N: This chapter wasn't fun to write. I only hope it makes me cringe for the right reasons._

I got lost several times on the way home. Familiar streets and alleys seemed to twist and lurch. Even stopping to get my bearings didn't help. Every time I did that, the walls around me went into a slow, dizzying spin. How I found my own street, and how long I took to find it, I would never know.

Mum paced up and down outside the street door, twisting her hands in her apron. My eyes wouldn't focus on her. I wished she'd stop moving.

"Mum." My voice sounded loud in the empty street. "Stand still."

She looked my way, put her hands to her mouth, and ran to me. The effort of looking at her was too much. I staggered and fell over.

"Oh, my God," she moaned, and seemed to be everywhere at once—picking me up, brushing me off, holding me up. "Where've you been? Was anybody sick there? What did you eat?"

I tried to answer, but couldn't put words together.

"Bloody hell, you're drunk!" Either she shook me, or she herself was shaking. "Lord God, what've you done? You know how he's on about drink. He'll kill you! What am I to do with you? What am I to _do_?"

I wanted only to lie down and sleep. "Don't do nothing, Mum."

"You'll have be sick, that's all. That's it, then. He has to think you're only sick. Come on, son, think about something sickening! Be sick!" I wanted to laugh, but she kept at me, teary-eyed, frantic. "Think about—think about cockroaches! They're sickening! Think about lice! Bedbugs!"

"Stop—" I whined, but it was too late. She held my head over the gutter while I was as sick as anybody could be. Then she picked me up and carried me into the house and up the stairs.

Dad opened the door. "What are you thinking? You can't go carrying him." He took me from her.

"He's sick," Mum said, rubbing her eyes.

The last time Dad had picked me up, I had been four or five, and it had been to tell me that my baby sister had died. The past and present got confused in my thoughts; I said what I had said then, "I want my baby sister. Give me my baby sister."

"Sick, is he?" He dropped me. "He's bloody drunk! What the hell are you about, drinking at your age?" He grabbed me by the scruff of the neck and shook me. I kicked and clutched at anything, anything at all to hold or stand on. I had seen pit dogs set on rats. This was the way the rats died, snapped back and forth in midair.

Compared to that, my feet on the floor and the familiar pain of the belt came as a relief.

There was nothing strange about Mum begging Dad to stop, pushing at him, hanging off his arm with all her weight. Sometimes it worked, sometimes it didn't, all depending on what kind of day he'd had. This time, she got his wrist into her mouth and bit down.

They sprang apart, staring, each seeming to see the other for the first time. "And you want another!" Mum accused him.

Merciful darkness closed over me.


	9. Chapter 9

I understood the appeal of strong drink: it gave a sound sleep regardless of how much pain you were in. The catch was, it added an aching head and queasy stomach to your pain the next day.

At lunchtime, the other kids went home to eat or out to play. I lay down on the bench.

Frowning, Miss Jackson left her table and sat next to me. "Do you feel poorly, Lestrade?" She had given up on trying to call me by my Christian name.

"Yes, Miss," I mumbled.

She laid her soft, warm hand on my forehead. "You don't have a fever."

"No, Miss." I couldn't very well tell her my problem was a hangover. The whole class got lectures against demon drink, complete with graphic aids showing what became of people who drank it.

"Sit up," she said, and felt behind my jaw, looking for what Mum called swollen glands. Even her gentle touch was painful. Her brows knitted as she scrutinized one side of my neck, then the other.

She seemed on the verge of asking a question when someone knocked on the door. My relief at the reprieve didn't last. Miss Jackson opened the door and let Dad in.

I must have looked absolutely horror-struck. Miss Jackson glanced at me, then turned back to Dad. She was perfectly civil, but her pinched face and the cold edge to her voice would have let any pupil know how much trouble they were in.

While I wondered what my teacher would do, Dad was explaining, "My name's Lestrade. I brung this for my boy." He held out the little covered crock Mum used to fetch milk.

Miss Jackson made no move to take it. "Your son isn't well, Mr. Lestrade."

"That's so, Miss, on account of somebody tried to get him drunk last night."

Of itself, her hand went to the little temperance pin on her collar, the only jewelry she wore. "I beg your pardon?" She glanced at me again. "Will you speak with me outside, Mr. Lestrade?"

"Here." Dad left the crock with me. "That's ginger beer. Settles your stomach."

At this time of day, he should have been asleep. Instead, he had walked half a mile to do me a kindness. I couldn't understand that at all.

When the door closed behind them, I found I was well enough to get up and eavesdrop.

Miss Jackson asked a question, too quietly for me to hear what it was.

"We don't know who done it, Miss," Dad said.

"Did you ask?"

Silence answered that calm question.

"Your son has some unusual bruises," Miss Jackson went on with the same icy composure, "and not for the first time." So that was what she had been looking and frowning at. I poked at my neck and winced. "A child who finds his home a dangerous place will seek shelter elsewhere. That makes him easy prey for those who mean him harm. You might keep that in mind. Good day, Mr. Lestrade."

On tiptoe, I went back to my bench.

Miss Jackson came in and closed the door quietly, although her hands trembled with suppressed fury.

She opened my copybook to the last page and wrote briefly, then put the book in my hands. "That is my address. If you should need my help, you can find me there."

Without another word, she went back to her table, got out the attendance book, dipped her pen in the inkwell, and wrote, slowly, as if ordering her thoughts through the writing.

I lay down again, this time not because I felt sick, but so that she wouldn't see the tears her kindness had brought to my eyes.

xXx

I had no reason to believe Jamie would be at the Harp and Crown as early as half past four, but I'd wait as long as needed.

He was there, though, having what he called tea—salt beef and cabbage piled high on a platter. I was willing to share that, but when he offered the whiskey, I shook my head hastily. I wasn't making that mistake again. "I'd rather have real tea."

Jamie laughed. "Sorry. I keep forgetting you're a Sassenach."

"What's a—?" I struggled with the foreign word.

"An Englishman." By the way he said it, it was no compliment.

The barman with the tattoo brought a mug of the strongest, blackest tea I'd seen in my life.

"This is Bob," Jamie said. "My brother."

We gave each other a polite nod. Bob was older and stockier than Jamie, but they had the same eyes—a dark non-color without the warmth of brown or the brightness of hazel.

"You get into a fight?" Bob asked.

"Not for weeks. Why?"

He shrugged. "You look like a scrapper, is all."

"So." Jamie sprang up. "I have deliveries to make. Want to ride shotgun?"

"It sounds interesting, but what is it?"

"Well, in America—"

"America?" I interrupted. "Mr. Jackson—my teacher's father—he's from there."

"I wish him better luck with it than I had," Jamie said bitterly.

"What's riding shotgun?"

"In America," he started over, "there are places so uncivilized that if a coachman values his life, he hires a man with a shotgun to ride along."

"And he shoots highwaymen?"

"They're called outlaws over there, but you have the general idea. Drink your tea and come on."

In the alley, a swaybacked, stoic bay nag stood hitched to a cart. When he saw Jamie, he whickered and stamped his feet.

"I know, I kept you waiting, poor old Paddy," Jamie said, scratching the horse's balding ears. "This is Paddy. You won't believe it, but he was a champion once."

"You're right. I don't believe it."

"It's insulting my friend, you are. If you could've only seen him when he was young. Ran like the wind and not so much as broke a sweat. Back in '37, he placed in the Doncaster Cup. Not his fault he didn't win; he ran against Beeswing, the finest stayer ever born."

"I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."

"The turf. Didn't I tell you? I was a jockey once."

"You rode Paddy in that race?"

"How old do you think I am? In Paddy's glory days, I was a stableboy, no older than you. When I came back here, I found him in a sale yard, fit for dog food, so I bought him. Cost every penny I had, and he was cheap at that. Go on, climb up. Mind the dog."

"What dog?"

Jamie pointed to a ragged blanket in the cart. It growled. "That dog."

"Not very friendly, is he?"

"He's choosy." He pushed at the scruffy gray beast. "Go on, Finn. Paddy can't pull all three of us."

The giant dog hauled himself up and out of the cart. He was as tall as a pony, lean, with a tail so long it almost dragged on the ground. Trying to ignore him, I climbed onto the seat.

Jamie swung up and jiggled the reins. "Get up, Paddy."

I could swear the old horse sighed as he got moving, like a workman whose dinner break was over.

"Were you a jockey in America?"

"You ask a lot of questions."

"How else should I find things out?"

He smiled, but not as if he found anything funny. "Fine. I'll tell you about America. I'd got some ideas in my head, you see, and if I'd stayed in Ireland, I'd have gone to prison for them. So I got myself onto a coffin ship. Before you ask, a coffin ship is a leaky old hulk crammed full of wretched people with no choice but to be on it. There isn't enough water, and there isn't enough food, but there's plenty of puking, fever, and dying."

I wondered exactly what kind of ideas he might have had. "It sounds like a prison ship."

"Worse. At least when convicts get transported, they have somewhere to go. They—the English—they sent those ships to Canada, only the Canadians didn't want us, either. When mine got there, the St. Lawrence river was lined with old hulks at anchor. They wouldn't let us off them because they figured we had sickness aboard. To be fair, they were right. You know how many Irish people are lying in unmarked graves on the bank of that river?"

That was probably what Miss Jackson called a rhetorical question.

"Nobody knows," Jamie said. "All I knew at the time was, I didn't want to end up one of them. So one night, when it was raining too hard for the river patrol to see me, I jumped overboard and swam to the American side. Damn near froze to death. The first thing I saw there in the Land of Gold was signs: 'Help Wanted. No Irish Need Apply.' As for the jobs they were willing to give me, Christ! Slaughtering hogs, hacking through bedrock for the railroad, hounding poor overworked nigger slaves— And that, by the by, is what we Irish are called over there: 'the niggers of Europe.'"

I caught myself thinking that if Miss Jackson heard Jamie's language, she'd make him stand in the corner. "Miss Jackson says you oughtn't to say 'Christ.'"

"Well, she'd change her tune if she saw the sights I've seen."

"And she says you ought to say 'people of color.'"

"Miss Jackson's got quite a vocabulary. Did she tell you what a powder monkey is?"

"No. What is it?"

"A man the railroad pays to handle gunpowder and set charges. I did that, too. Powder monkeys die young. When I got sick of knowing every day might be my last, I went to California. Panning for gold, there was a bright idea."

"What did you find?"

"Dirt."

That made me laugh. "Then it was the only boring thing that ever happened to you."

Jamie grinned. "It was, at that. Hey, can you drive?"

"No."

"It's easy. Like this." He put the reins into my hands. "Come on, Paddy, show some self-respect."

The old horse broke into a loose-jointed trot. He seemed to be humoring us.

If Jamie noticed his whim was being indulged by a nag, he didn't mind. "That's it. See, you're driving!" He clapped me on the back.

I flinched and bit back a yelp. His hand had landed on a stripe from the belt.

"What's the matter?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing, hell. Let me see."

"No." I wrapped my arms around myself.

"I won't hurt you, promise." Jamie ignored my squirming and protests and lifted my shirt. "Jesus, Mary, and Joseph. Did Nancy do this?"

I shook my head.

"No, she's better than that. Oh, _damn_ it!" He gave the cart's boards a savage kick. "_Why_ didn't she tell me about you? I'd have moved heaven and earth! God _damn_ it!"

Paddy, sensing that he was unsupervised, had stopped. He swiveled his ears and waited patiently for us to sort things out.

"I was drinking," I explained.

"Drinking? You mean that teaspoon of whiskey the other night?"

I nodded. "He doesn't like drinking."

"Obviously."

I had never wanted anything more than I wanted to change the subject, but I couldn't think of anything to say.

"When I was your age, I got beat, too. In school. For talking Gaelic."

With great relief, I asked, "What's Gaelic?"

"Irish people's language. The Sassenachs don't want us to speak it. They're afraid of what we might say behind their backs." He fished cigs out of his pocket and handed me one. "That was when I knew I hated them all. But, don't you know, I learned something from them. At first, I thought they beat me because I did something they didn't like, but I figured out they did it because I _was_. No more than that—because I _was_. Didn't have anything to do with me personally. Ever think that's how it is with you?"

I thought it over. It made a kind of hopeless sense. "I don't know."

"Well, I wish to heaven you did know." He sighed and rubbed a hand over his eyes. "It won't happen again. I'm going to fix it."

_A/N: Okay, Jamie's the world's worst influence on a child, but at least he's honest. Everything he says about the coffin ships is true. Oh, yeah, and Beeswing was a real horse. I have no idea who came in second._


	10. Chapter 10

In the morning, a racket woke me.

Dad sat at the table, one hand clapped to his jaw, as if he had a toothache. Mum stood over him, dabbing his face with a bloodstained rag.

My first thought was that there had been another brawl at the gates. The dock's gates opened at six, and dockers desperate for a day's or an hour's pay rushed in. If there weren't enough jobs to go around, they fought each other over them. If that got out of hand, the watchmen broke it up.

Dad was bigger and stronger than most of the dockers, and unlike them, he had something to eat every day. He didn't lose. Sometimes he came home with barked knuckles or a shiner, but never bleeding.

_Well_, I thought, biting my lip to keep from smiling, _how do _you _like it_?

Then Mum noticed that I was awake, and thrust the pitcher into my hands. "Go get water."

She dipped the rag in the washbasin. The water swirled pink with blood.

Equally fascinated and disgusted, I ran down to the pump in the yard, filled the pitcher, and took deep breaths of the cool, soft morning air.

On the way back, I saw opportunity in a trail of blood splatters leading to our door. With some care, I could probably follow them all the way back to the London Docks.

I opened the door in time to hear Mum say, "Do you want the police?"

"Wouldn't be no use," Dad said. "Them that did it's long gone."

"S'pose you're right." Mum dabbed at his mouth again.

"Nancy! That hurts!"

"Sorry." She didn't sound sorry at all. "Hold that, then." She pressed the cloth to his lip with one hand and took the pitcher from me with the other.

I dumped the washbasin out the window and set it back on the table.

Dad made a horrified sound and spat onto the cloth. A gout of thick red blood came out, and the shards of a broken tooth. His lip was split nearly through. The raw edges of the wound fluttered as he breathed.

Mum turned away and sat down heavily, with a queasy look on her face. Quickly I poured water into the washbasin and splashed some on her forehead. That seemed to revive her; she murmured, "I've got to go to work. I'll be late as it is." She stood up, took her hat and shawl from their nails on the wall, and went out.

That left me alone with Dad, which was rarely pleasant and always nerve-racking. As quietly as possible, I gathered my books, pen, and copybook (nearly filled with sums and my improving penmanship), washed my face and hands, and combed my hair. The cleaner and tidier I looked, the more Miss Jackson approved.

"Can I do anything for you, Dad?" My concern wasn't genuine, but any smugness I had felt about him getting a beating for once, had flown at the sight of that gaping cut.

He shook his head.

That left me free to try my luck at following a blood trail. The drying speckles led down the stairs and into the muddy street, where I nearly lost them. It was sheer stubbornness that kept me finding a drop here and a splash there. At the entrance to a dark court, there were splotches on the cobblestones. The trail ended there. I tracked it back and forth a dozen times—nothing. My assumption about a fight at the dock gates was wrong. Dad had gotten into a fight here in the street, a few hundred yards from home.

I looked carefully at the wall—more blood, in elongated spatters, like ink flung off a dropped pen. What had happened seemed clear. Ruffians had waited here, in the tunnel-like entrance to the court. It was dark in there now; it would have been pitch black an hour ago. Dad wouldn't have seen them.

They must have been displeased. Dad wouldn't have had a penny on him. I wondered why they hadn't waited for a Saturday night, when most people drew their pay. Why on a Tuesday morning? Sometimes people were robbed of their clothes, but he was wearing everything he had the night before.

At any rate, the case was closed and I was late for school. Miss Jackson would be disappointed in me, and I could think of very little worse—but, yes, I could. Nobody had remembered my breakfast or lunch.

My carefully hoarded pennies and halfpennies were in the tea tin at home. I could buy some food with a few, but I wasn't going back for them. By now, Dad would have gotten past being stunned and be in a mood to blame somebody. I had no intention of going home before nine tonight.

I'd have to go hungry until noon, when I could run to Mum for a cup of tea with all the milk and sugar I could stir into it. Not much, but it would have to do.

After that, I could only hope Jamie was at the Harp and Crown with some real food.

I braced myself for a long day.

xXx

There was chicken stew at the Harp and Crown. When Bob brought me a steaming bowl of it, I would have had to be blind to miss his fresh black eye. I was too hungry to care—until Jamie came in as jaunty as ever, despite skinned knuckles and a cut on his chin.

_I'm going to fix it_. That's what he had said. His method had been what Miss Jackson called questionable. She said "questionable judgment" when she meant "bloody stupid."

I put it out of my mind. The food was too good to waste by thinking too much and losing my appetite.

"So," Jamie said, leaning back from the table and lighting a cig. "You forget how to talk?"

I shrugged. "I was late for school, but Miss Jackson didn't scold me."

"And why were you late?"

"I was looking at blood."

He coughed, took the cig out of his mouth, and sat up. "How's that?"

"You heard me. You left quite a mess. I think I see how you did it, but what I don't know is why."

"Don't you? Really?" His no-color eyes went wide. "Jesus, what more do you need?"

"An answer. Why?"

"Because a man takes care of his own."

"His own what?"

Jamie shook his head. "Now, how can you be such a clever lad, and not put it together? All right, then." He slapped the table, making the bowls and mugs jump. "I'm going to tell you straight out. Nancy let you think Will Lestrade's your father. Well, he isn't. I am."

We sat in silence, not looking at each other, for quite some time.

"But—" I wanted to object, but to what, exactly?

To my dawning suspicion that everything I knew was wrong.

No, it was mad—not possible.

Yet, where had I seen that black hair, those bottomless eyes, except in the mirror?

I remembered my certificate of baptism, dated almost two years late and on my parents' wedding day.

And, yes, that explained why Dad had never taken to me. I was another man's child, who had lived while his own sons and daughters died. His resentment of me wasn't personal. He would have felt the same regardless of who I was.

"But—" I seemed powerless to stop saying the word.

"Not exactly good news, is it? A crazy Irishman for a father." Jamie smiled, but it was a sad expression.

"But—" I tried to get something else, anything else, out of my mouth. "But I don't know your last name."

"Robinson. And I don't know your Christian name."

"It's Galahad," I admitted.

"Oh, no. Tell me your mother didn't do that to you."

I shrugged.

"I read her a poem by some Tennyson fellow. Sir Galahad and his pure heart, or whatever the hell he had that was pure. I can't believe she hung that on you."

"It comes from a poem?" I wanted to laugh. My poor mum—she'd fancied a few lines of rhyme, and because of that I was doomed to a lifetime with a funny name.

"Yeah, Nancy always was a bit of a dreamer. But listen, you and me have got to be practical." Jamie ground out the stub of his cig and lit another. He held the packet out to me. "Want one?"

I shrugged again and took it.

"Like I was saying," he went on, tossing me the matches, "we've got to be practical. I only wish to hell I knew what practical might be."

Puffing on my cig, I considered the question and tried to look mature. "We keep it between ourselves?"

"Too late." Jamie jerked his thumb at the barman. "Your Uncle Bob there knows already."

"How did he find out?"

"Must have been back in October, Nancy came here. Maybe she thought nobody'd recognize her after all those years. Well, Bob's got a good eye. He knew her right off."

There was a problem with that story. "Why would she tell him? Seems like she didn't want you to know, much less your brother."

"She didn't. He was curious, so he found out where she lived. He saw you. And like it or not, you're the dead spit of me."

"Why'd you wait so long to come round?"

"If you have reference to the night your dear mother nearly brained me—"

I nodded, not encouragingly. He was getting ahead of the story.

Without further drama, Jamie said, "I was in Boston. It took that long for Bob to get word to me, and me to get to London."

"Boston, Massachusetts?" I asked. "Miss Jackson's father used to live in Massachusetts."

"Your Miss Jackson must be a fine woman."

"She is," I said, thinking of how she had stood up to Dad. "But how do you know that?"

"By the way you talk about her. Seems to me she's one of the few to earn your respect. Not that you've had many to choose from."

I thought that over. He was right. I didn't know many respectable people. Also, since Mum objected to Jamie, he was probably not on the short list. "Why doesn't Mum like you?" I asked.

Jamie gazed at the far wall. I turned to look, but nothing was there. After a long silence, he said, "Love can turn to hate. Sad to say, you'll find out for yourself."

Future unhappiness wasn't a subject I cared to dwell on, so I changed it. "What do _you_ think would be practical?" I used the grown-up-sounding term with some pride. Jamie treated me like an equal, not an amusingly precocious child.

Practicality seemed to cheer Jamie up. "Well," he said, after no consideration whatsoever, "for one thing, how'd you like to work with me?"

I considered learning to drive, having a steady job. The idea had great appeal, as did the prospect of eating at the Harp and Crown more often. Much less attractive was the thought of not going to school anymore.

"I work mostly at night," Jamie said, solving that problem. "You'd be out late."

"That's all right, then." Mum would throw a fit, but Dad, this once, would be on my side. He respected hard work.

Then I looked at Jamie's ragged shirt and braces, patched trousers and resoled boots, and doubt set in. "Can you afford that?"

"Seems to me I can't afford not to. Besides—" He stuck his boot out and considered it. "As you'll also learn, if you're dressed respectable, you can pass unnoticed in respectable places. If you're dressed like this, you can pass unnoticed everywhere else."

"How much will you pay me?" I asked.

"Ten percent and dinner."

"I will."

"Good man." Jamie shook my hand on the deal. "Be here tomorrow at half past four."

"Not today?" I felt positively cheated.

"Sorry. Personal matters to attend to."

Maybe he had another family—another son.

He stood up, walked away, turned back. "And you can tell that Sassenach if he lays a hand on you again, he's a dead man."

"Don't. Without him, Mum and me go out on the street."

"You've got another choice," Jamie said. "So does your mother, if she's only smart enough to see it."


	11. Chapter 11

"Your teacher's right," Dad said. "Your mum's right. I ain't been no kind of father to you."

They hadn't said any such thing—although they had certainly implied it.

I only wanted to eat my breakfast bread and butter, and escape to school. Him feeling like a failure wasn't my problem.

"See here." The tone of his voice made me look at him. "You think you know it all and you can take care of yourself. Well, you can't. You're nine years old, and you don't know. You have to listen to folks who can tell you. Now, you may think I'm stupid and ignorant, and you're right, at that, but I do know some things you don't."

Much as I resented being lectured, I kept my mouth shut.

"My mum and dad died of drink when I wasn't no older than you. It wasn't no fun to live with drunkards, but being on my own was worse. The things I done to stay alive ain't fit for your ears. You understand me?"

"Yes." I could have named him a dozen kids hungry enough to sell themselves for a loaf of bread. It had never occurred to me that he had once been one of them. The thought was enlightening, but not at all pleasant.

"So your mum and me managed to give you a better life than that, at least. You got a place to live. You got food to eat. You got a mum who'd up and die if anything happened to you. So why did you do the one thing that causes most of the trouble in this world, the one thing you been told time and again not to do, the _one thing_ sure to bollix your life, which is drinking?"

Every possible answer to that would be the wrong one.

"Nobody means well by giving strong drink to a child. They mean to harm you, and nothing else."

Where he suspected unsubtle malice, I recognized plain stupidity. That, too, I kept to myself.

"As for drink itself, at first you drink to get through a rough spot, then through the day, then through what you have to do to get more drink. Before you know it, you're a worthless drunkard."

Anger and pity were a bad mixture. Each kept me from doing justice to the other.

"You know what made me give up drink? I met your mum. She wouldn't have me if I wasn't sober, and that was that. What you go through to stop drinking is a world of pain. You wouldn't wish it on your worst enemy. It was only the hope of her that kept me alive. She has such nice ways, you see, like she was made for something better than what life give her." He shrugged. "You take after her that way. Difference is, she's got all she's ever going to, little as it is. You're young; you can have something more if you only—" Whatever it was, he couldn't put it into words. "Your mum don't know I'm telling you none of this, and you're not to say. You can't go upsetting her just now."

That begged a question, but I didn't ask.

"She don't want this one." His earnest expression twisted into one of pain. "She's afraid it'll die, like the others."

I could say nothing to that.

"So." Dad pulled himself together. "She ain't going to be able to work much longer. And that means you'll have to."

"I got a job yesterday," I said quietly. "It's nights. She won't like that."

"She'll like it, on account of you won't have to stop going to school. Unless you want to?"

I shook my head.

"Go see her, then. Tell her she's got no cause to worry about that."

It seemed small comfort, compared to what she did have to worry about.

"You're late for school by now, ain't you? Better have a note for your teacher. Write something for me to sign."

I didn't dare ask how he intended to do that. I opened my copybook. "What should I write?" Not a word of this conversation was fit for Miss Jackson.

"Say you're late on account of family matters."

That sounded reasonable enough. I wrote it and passed the copybook to Dad, wondering how he planned to sign it.

He turned to the first page, where almost a year ago I had written his name to please Mum. Holding the pencil all wrong, laboriously he copied the letters, one by one.

"There." He closed the book with the relief that comes of finishing a mighty piece of work. "Get on, now. I got to get some sleep."

Out of the room, I waited until the lump in my throat went away.

Every time I thought I knew him, I was wrong.

xXx

With that behind me, I could be excused for my anger at seeing Mum laughing, leaning against a handsome, rakish jarvey.

"Mum," I said.

She stood up, but the jarvey kept his arm around her shoulders. "Nancy," he said, flashing white teeth, "don't tell me this is your boy."

"You're meant to be at school," she said. It sounded like an accusation.

"Hell, I ain't seen you since you was a little nipper," the man said to me, oblivious.

Then somebody whistled for a cab. He set his hat straight and pulled on the jacket he had slung over his shoulder. As he did, I caught a glimpse of the hound-and-shamrock tattoo on his arm.

The instant he was gone, Mum turned on me. "Don't you dare find fault. I've stuck up for Will Lestrade for the last time. It's all broken promises, and I'm fed up."

If she had dropped a hammer on my head, I wouldn't have been more stunned. "What?"

"You know very well what. He promised me he'd be a good father to you, and he ain't been. You and me both had enough, and I aim to put a stop to it."

I tried to take this in. "What do you aim to do? And who was that?"

She picked at her thumbnail. "Malachi O'Neill. You and me're going to stay with him—soon's I talk him round."

I didn't think before I spoke. "Mum, you haven't the soundest judgment when it comes to men."

"Malachi's different."

"Yet he has to be talked round."

"Well, it's a lot to put on him, ain't it?"

"Did you see his tattoo?"

I would have felt better if she hadn't seen anything on him that would ordinarily be covered by clothes, but she demanded, "What of it?"

"Just asking." I wanted to ask all sorts of questions. If the sacrifices she had made for my sake had been too great. If I was a mistake she regretted.

"Look here." She folded her arms, sulking. "You got to give me a chance. I'm twenty-six years old, you know that? I ain't no young thing no more, what can live on air and hope. And if I want a bit of peace and comfort at last, that ain't for you to find fault with."

So I had my answers.

"I came to tell you I won't be home til late from now on," I said. "I got a job."

I waited for a barrage of questions about where, and who for, and what kind of work, but she only said, "Good. That's a help."

xXx

By the time I got to school, Miss Jackson had already written the quotation on the chalkboard. She wrote a different one every day, so the little kids would learn new words, and the older ones could practice writing a fair hand. The quotation usually matched her mood. Today's was, _Fathers, provoke not your children to wrath. Ephesians 4:6._

I showed her my note. She looked at me so intently that I wondered if my hair was untidy or my face dirty, but she said only, "Thank you. Please take your seat."

I got the ordinary day I had hoped for, until the very last minute. When Miss Jackson dismissed us, she added quietly, "Lestrade, please remain for a moment."

I wondered what I might have done wrong—in her presence, anyway. In my case, try as she might, she had done an incomplete job of squelching "street culture," as she called low-class ways.

I tried to distract her by saying, "I can't stay long, miss. I have to go to work."

She tapped her fingers on the table, thinking. "I seem to keep asking you if you're all right. And you keep telling me you are, when I know better."

"I'm fine, Miss, really."

"There I must disagree with you. This is the problem, though; I know things aren't fine for you, and there's very little I can do about it. Most of the laws of England are reasonable and just, but a few are not."

"I don't know what you mean, Miss."

"I mean—" She gave me a look that was neither hope nor sorrow, but both. "I mean that someday there will be laws adequate to protect children from ill-treatment, but that there aren't now. And I mean that there will be better days, and you will see them."

Once again, I didn't know what to say. That was becoming more common than I liked.


	12. Chapter 12

"I never will get used to this." Jamie shook his head. "All these people."

Cable Street was a seething mass of carts, cabs, barrows, and darting pedestrians. But then, it was everyday.

"Don't you wonder where they all come from? What they're about, where they're going?"

I shrugged. "Not really."

"The other day—_hi, you!_" he shouted at urchins running through the maze of wheels and hooves. "Mind where you go! You'll spook the horse!"

Finn raised his shaggy hackles, but if Paddy could have yawned, he would have.

"The other day?" I prompted.

"Yeah. You won't believe this, but it goes to show how you can't be by yourself anywhere in this city. I met a man who goes down into the sewer every day—on purpose. It seems he goes looking for valuables somebody might have dropped down the drain. That's the man's job! And furthermore, he tells me there're hundreds like him. Hundreds of people clambering about in the sewers."

I couldn't help laughing. "You never heard of toshers? That's what they're called."

"Poor bastards, is what I'd call 'em."

"It isn't a job I'd fancy," I admitted. "There're rats down there. And sometimes a tosher will forget to mind the tide, and drown when it comes in."

Jamie shuddered. "Fine people, the English. Send men into the sewers to risk their lives scrambling for pennies, evict poor farmers for not having the money to pay rent to the rich, let kids starve in sight of warehouses full of grain— Anybody who'd do that to another human being deserves whatever they get."

I was more interested in toshers than politics. "I heard once that a crocodile escaped from the zoo and was living under Parliament, and some fellow—"

"Now that's a tall tale, and you know it. Trying to put one over on your old man, are you?" He caught my eye and grinned. "Ought to be ashamed of yourself." He directed Paddy into a side street, no less crowded and narrower. "Seriously, where would a man go if he wanted to be left to himself?"

I disliked being alone, so I had never considered the question. "Home, I suppose."

"I live in a room over the Harp and Crown. I share it with Bob. He snores."

I laughed. "The alley out back, then?"

"I heard a noise out there at two in the morning last night. What did I find but—never mind; you're too young. Try again."

As games to pass the time went, this wasn't bad. There was a certain challenge in it. Where _would_ you go to be alone in a city of millions?

"The roof?" I guessed.

"Prying chimney sweeps. Try again."

"Where does Paddy stay?"

"In a stable, with a dozen other poor old carthorses, and three carters sleep in the haymow."

Then I had it. "I know!"

"Do you, now?"

"Under a bridge," I said.

"People work in the bloody sewers, yet nobody's under a bridge?"

"Well, they would be, but the police chase them out. Constable Byrne told me."

That had Jamie's interest. "What do you mean, they chase them out?"

"Well, every bridge is on some constable's patch, so when he walks his beat, he goes down underneath and tells people to move along."

"So how can you be alone there?"

"The constables only come round every so often. You could be alone for fifteen, twenty minutes, anyhow."

He smiled. "Is that so? Well, that's worth knowing."

And then we were at the gates of the Red Lion Brewery, where we had come to collect beer and ale for the Harp and Crown, and mash for Paddy.


	13. Chapter 13

"Try those for size." Jamie dropped a pair of shoes on the Harp and Crown's scarred table. Not just any shoes, either, but thick leather with hobnail soles, proper work shoes.

I slid my bare feet into them and laced them up. They were a size or so larger than I needed. That was also a good thing; they'd fit longer. "Not bad. Thank you."

"Least I can do. Winter's coming." He tossed Finn a scrap of bacon.

"It's August," I pointed out.

"It seems a long way off because you're a kid. Time gets shorter and the world looks smaller when you're grown."

Philosophizing was over my head. "How come Finn doesn't like anybody but you?"

"He's had a hard life." Jamie scratched the dog's long, scraggy ears. "Feed him every day, and treat him civil, and he'll come around."

"Is your tattoo a picture of him?"

He gave a start at that, as if stung. Then he told me a ridiculous story about somebody named Cu Chulainn, who had accidentally killed a guard dog and volunteered to take its place.

"That's hard to believe," I said.

"Well, Irishmen don't think so. Cu Chulainn's a hero."

"But what does that have to do with your tattoo?"

He studied me. "All right. You can keep a secret. If you couldn't, your mother and the rozzers would've been on me by now."

I was sorely tempted to point out that policemen hated being called rozzers. Only the threat of never hearing Jamie's secret kept my mouth shut.

"This-" He rubbed his hand over the tattoo. "-is the sign of the _Conairte na hEireann_. The Hounds of Ireland. Ireland was stolen from our people, and we want it back."

I thought this over. "So only Irishmen can be _Con-Cor_—what you said?"

"_Conairte na hEireann. _Yes."

Malachi had the tattoo, but looked and sounded as Cockney as anybody else. I decided it would be wise not to mention him. "Do you think I'm Irish?" I asked.

"I know you are."

"I'm not sure I want to be," I said with more honesty than tact.

Jamie smiled. "The world being what it is, that's perfectly sensible." He stood up. "Come on. We've got to go to Waterloo Bridge Station."

"Waterloo's a toll bridge," I said. "Westminster's free."

"See there?" Jamie laughed. "That's why it's good to have an assistant. Ought to make you Minister of Transportation."

"I'd rather be a—" I caught myself before saying the word _policeman_. That wasn't an ambition I cared to make known to Jamie. I doubted that he'd approve.

That night, I made it home before ten o'clock, in time to catch Constable Byrne in the last few minutes of his shift.

"Haven't seen you about," he said.

"I've been working," I told him with more than a little pride.

He wasn't impressed. "Out late, aren't you? Is what you're doing respectable?"

"Yes." It was the truth, but I felt guilty, as if I were lying.


	14. Chapter 14

In those days, the Thames Embankment hadn't been built, and only rich and poor people had riverfront property. Rich people had a nice view of the river from their lawns. Poor people had to look at stinking mudflats at low tide, and water lapping at the back door at high tide.

It was to one of those riverbank shacks that we drove early in October, the cart piled high with a coracle balanced over two small wooden kegs, and Paddy's horse blanket covering it all. In a bit more than two months, my attitude toward the odd assortment of stuff people wanted carted somewhere had progressed from interest, through amusement, to boredom. I would have preferred hauling baggage from one of the train stations, if only because there was usually a tip at the end of it.

On the other hand, we had done that last night, and the stout, white-haired lady who'd hired us had pinched my cheek and called me a helpful little lad. Jamie's opinion, once we had left her waving from her front garden, had been, "A man can't always expect to do things the way he wants to do them, but a woman can. Make your peace with that early, and spare yourself considerable bewilderment." I had been too busy rubbing lavender-scented hand cream off my face to appreciate the advice. Extra sixpence or not, driving a boat to the water had to be better than that sort of thing.

"Right there'll do." Jamie pointed to the muddy ground in front of the little house. I was driving Paddy; he stopped at one twitch on the reins. Jamie jumped down, pulled the horse blanket off the coracle, and tossed it over Paddy's back. He shouldered the little round boat and leaned it against the shack's splintery wall, while I rolled the kegs to the cart's gate.

Jamie heaved one onto each of his shoulders. "I might be some time. Catch up on your sleep, why don't you?"

Not a bad idea. Between school in the daytime and work at night, I stumbled heavy-lidded through mornings, and napped at lunchtime.

I whistled for Finn. Jamie had been right about him; civility and table scraps had made him my dog, too. And a good thing; the night air close to the river was damp and chill, but Finn was warm.

The dog leaped into the cart, circled, and curled up, long tail looped over his nose.

As I lay down on the boards beside him, using my crooked arm as a pillow, I said, "You sleep like a cat, you know."

His tail thumped on the boards, raising the acrid odor of matches. I raised my head and sniffed. Jamie had taken his matches with him, and I didn't have any, so where was that smell coming from? I ran my hand over the board. A fine powder came away on my palm and fingers. By moonlight it was hard to be sure, but it didn't look the color of dirt. Maybe whatever it was had leaked from one of those kegs.

I was torn between going after Jamie to tell him about the stuff, or going to sleep as he had suggested. As it happened, there was no time to do either; Malachi O'Neill sauntered out of the house, lighting a cigar.

I had taken a dislike to him at first sight. Maybe it was the rakish tilt of his bowler, or the wavy chestnut hair as pretty as a girl's. The watch chain you could have used to winch a ship into dry dock may have had something to do with it, or the gold front tooth that even now glittered in the moonlight.

Finn didn't care for him, either; he raised his massive head and growled when Malachi leaned an arm on the cart.

Malachi pulled his arm back. "That cur ain't the only dangerous company you keep, laddie."

"Not rightly your business, is it?"

He shrugged. "I'm just saying, take care. It's easier to get into trouble than out of it."

"Speaking of which-" I looked him straight in the eye and kept my tone cool. "Did my mother tell you she's going to have a baby?"

She hadn't, if the way his smirk disappeared was anything to go by, but he shot right back with, "She know who your new friends are?"

"I'll make an agreement with you. You don't tell her about me, and I won't tell her husband about you."

He gave me a knife-edged look. "You're too clever by half, laddie. Best hope that's enough to keep you alive."

* * *

><p>At school the next morning, I remembered the spilled powder, and asked Miss Jackson, "What makes matches smell funny?"<p>

She was used to my questions by now; she didn't bat an eye. "Sulfur or phosphorus, most likely. Look them up in the encyclopedia."

* * *

><p><em>I still like reviews, and I'm not ignoring them. I'm just trying to put most of my computer time into getting the rest of this written before the summer semester starts!<em>


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